Storing of a rope may be needed in various stages of its lifetime. The storing is conventionally implemented by forming a rope reel of the rope so that it can be stored and/or transported as a compact unit. In the field of elevators, storing is usually needed for transporting the rope to the site, and further to the specific installation location where the rope can be unwound and installed in the elevator.
Ropes are typically irreversibly flexible such that after bending the rope into a curve, it does not reverse back to its original form by itself. These kinds of ropes usually comprise load bearing members made of twisted wires or equivalents. This kind of rope is easy to wind around a drum where it can be stored until a later unwinding. Also such ropes exist, which are rod-like and have a straight form when in rest state. This type of rope is presented in patent publication WO2009090299 A1. This type of ropes are relatively rigid, but elastically bendable, and the rope self-reverses back to a straight form from bent form in rest state, i.e. after all bending directed to it ceases. A known way to store this kind of ropes has been to form a rope reel from the rope by winding it around a drum and subsequently tying the rope end against the outer rim of the rope reel so that the rope reel cannot unwind.
The known methods described above have caused difficulties in later unwinding process. In particular, after releasing the rope end, the rope end has been difficult to control. This has been the case particularly with ropes that are elastically bendable and tending to reverse towards straight form after bending. It has been found out that the bending tension is prone to cause difficulties in unwinding of the rope the more rigid the elastically bendable ropes are. The rope tends to straighten as an effect of said bending tension and may easily escape from the hands of the person preparing the unwinding operation. Avoiding this type of events has necessitated auxiliary means or personnel for controlling the rope end once it has been freed from the reel.